By Sunny Igboanugo
Today I formally announce the publication of my book, titled: Soyinka’s Metamorphosis: Echoes from “The People’s Mandate,” a copy of which has just arrived from the UK where it was published. It is a direct response to the book: Baiting Igbophobia, The Sunny Igboanugo Thesis authored by Prof. Wole Soyinka and released sometime in January this year.
This 2024 marks my 33 years of practice as a journalist, starting from my debut with The Guardian in 1991 to Daily Independent and now Publisher of Whirlwindnews, an online newspaper.
My career, like those of many of my colleagues, has been marked with the ups and downs prevalent with the practice of the profession in Nigeria. As a cob reporter still learning the ropes, I was nearly mobbed by angry workers at St. Bridget College, Asaba where some of them who left Benin after Delta State was created from the old Bendel, by the Ibrahim Babangida regime in 1991, were quartered for lack of accommodation.
One evening, few days after arriving the city as the first reporter of The Flagship, posted to the new state, I had undertaken a discreet, but purely noble mission to investigate and ascertain the condition of the workers in their temporary abode. But the mission soon blew into my face, because the affected workers whose emotional state of reasoning appeared to have been held in place by a thin line due to the sudden change in their condition, and threatening to snap at any moment, soon became suspicious.
Soon, the line of inquiry and general mannerism, which betrayed my level as a rookie, triggered off a volley of questions from some palpably edgy staff, who were supposed to be my sources. They soon suspected I was a criminal on a recce mission to survey their territory for later night attack. It was only by the intervention of providence that I was saved from the obvious lynching that could probably have included being ringed with tyre, laced with petrol and set on fire.
Again, today, I carry the physical and psychological lacerations of the aftermaths of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential elections as a believer and direct participant in the attempt to revalidate that historic mandate, which has since been achieved today. So involved was I that when the UN Special rapporteurs arrived Enugu where I was later transferred to investigate the rights abuses associated with the June 12 struggle, I was one of the candidates they interviewed privately.
Again, in 2007, a state governor took four pages each in virtually all newspapers in Nigeria to denigrate me as blackmailer, who went to government houses around Nigeria harassing governors for money. This was a governor I never ever met in person, either in his private or official capacity even till date. My only crime was insisting in my media interventions relating to and on the sanctity of the tenure of the leadership of Ohanaeze Ndigbo during their crisis that year and thereabouts. This same governor, even took out a lawsuit against me some years after and was sustaining the move to have me jailed on no account order than my purely professional duties until providence – that fate that helps tailless-cow to chase away flies ensured that he never made it back for a second term.
Why did I travel this far through the route of memory? It is to underscore that that I am not new to the travails embedded in this profession, which I love so much that I beg my creator that should I return to this part of life again, I should be allowed to practice. The three examples above are just samples of them.
Though the joy of the glorious moments, sometimes far outweighs the pains, trials and tribulations are still numerous and, in many cases, life-threatening. Yet, none of these, has brought me to the devastating level distress I experienced in the last few months, since this book by Prof. Soyinka.
It almost brought me to the state of emotional wreck. The said book, under his INTERVENTION SERIES, was in response to my article of September 19, 2023. In the book, only a scant mention of the content of the article mas made.
The rest was devoted to attack on my Igbo identity. If the sage, had descended on me as a person, if he had reduced me as less than Nebuchadnezzar, as he once labelled, former President Goodluck Jonathan, I would have remained mute and probably continued with my trade the way I know it. Reading the book itself, he did exactly that. But he did not stop at describing my persona in the most terrible terms or attacking my professional competence, for which there would not have been any form of riposte.
My pain was the attempt by the Prof. to strip me of my identity as a Nigerian and closet me in purely ethnic straightjacket. There was nothing in the original piece from me that suggested any ethnic link by any stroke imagination. The only link I tried to establish was that the NADECO affinity the Nobel Laureate shares with President Bola Tinubu as veterans of the June 12 struggle was the binding factor. I tried to explain how, having struggled together through the thick and thin of the NADECO era they had developed the compelling need to watch each other’s back no matter the circumstances. I argued that such relationship would naturally create personal indebtedness too difficult to break. That was all my piece was all about. Even though there were one or two factual errors, which the Prof. pointed out in his book, they did not detract from the texture of the reasoning that formed the basis for holding my views. The emphasis was on the affinity that existed between the two.
I was completely aghast when the Prof. took the issue completely out of context and veered into ethic labelling. That the Prof. would take that route is my idea of metamorphosis. I would not in my wildest imagination assume that the Soyinka of The Man Died fame would descend into such arena occupied by less-endowed in the society.
That informed my determination to reply by perhaps telling my own story to establish my true identity and insist on it. In fact some people still latching on similar ethnic sentiments, tried to dissuade me by pulling up what they advertised as the pro-Biafra sentiments of the Prof. That even strengthened my position, because I believe such a figure who stood against bad hand that was dealt the Igbo people of Biafra at such a young age, should even do more now that age has added more insight and knowledge to him.
I believe my reply would reactivate his memory and remind him who he truly is in the history of Nigeria. It was a duty I felt compelled to do. How did the Igbo come into such a plain discourse? So, an Igbo man cannot contribute to any subject in today’s Nigeria without being told from whence he is coming? That is the essence of this book. To think of it, this book is therefore, a PROTEST! I am not only protesting with this book as an individual, but to draw global attention to the dangerous trend that has become the lot of Ndigbo today, where they are being deliberately targeted as the culprits to anything that goes wrong in the country.
I am insisting that nobody can take away my Nigerianess. I am aware that I am a global dwarf compared to the dominating image of Prof. Wole Soyinka globally. I do not compete with him or attempt to do so in any way. His own book is as usual, already making waves nationally and internationally like many other of his works.
Mine may make little impact. But whatever impact it makes, even if it is read by one person, I will be glad that someone outside myself would have heard my story. That is why I am happy today. For the first time in months, I have once again regained some level of happiness. I have told my story, from my little corner of the world space. Let Prof. Wole Soyinka have the world stage, but allow me to have my corner where my voice, no matter how tiny will be allowed to echo. That is my prayer.
Of course, aside my protest, I have also used this book to try and tell the full story based on my views and how I captured the 2023 general election, particularly that of the presidential polls of February 25. It is a full package that tried to puncture some of the assertions out there in the public domain, including those made by the Nobel Laureate made regarding the election.
I tried to capture the full sequence of events, their meaning and how they affected the outcome of the election in the most unbiased manner and in the end declared who I believe won the election between Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and Peter Obi of the Labour Party.
In the end, just as I spoke some 31 years ago on June 12, I spoke as professionally as any individual in the book. I shall continue to do so. I spoke yesterday, I shall speak today and I shall speak tomorrow. I shall not only speak as an Igbo, I shall speak as a Nigerian with my full chest. Just like Prof. Wole Soyinka, a Yoruba or Adamu, an Hausa will speak.
